‘Homeland’ Is Unwatchable ‘Cause There’s No One To Root For

If you’ve been watching Homeland recently with the thought that the show is becoming harder and harder to sit through, the truth is that it may very well be. While proponents of the show claim that the characters are antiheroes, those same characters have to have at least some redeeming qualities for the antihero clause to be activated. Saul is busy machinating a plot to overthrow the leader of Iranian intelligence in a plot that is uncomfortably close to the Iran Contra crisis, Carrie is making unwise decisions like taking Brody to see his daughter, and Brody himself has barely been human this entire season. With nothing and nobody left to root for the audience is alienated and not in the tantalizing way that keeps people coming back. Homeland was originally valued for the way it walked the tight line between the ugly truths of homeland security and the basic conventions of fiction. It seems like the writers have forgotten that we turn on television to see an altered version of reality not a thinly fictionalized account of our dire local newscasts.